


Vigilante

by persistent_pedantry



Series: Just a Bunch of Technicolour Horses, but They're Angsty and Have Guns Now [3]
Category: Fallout: Equestria, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27241402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persistent_pedantry/pseuds/persistent_pedantry
Summary: Code Break lives to observe, and it's all he's permitted to do. If he wanted to stop watching the horrors of the post-apocalyptic wasteland and escape a secret military organization, what's the worst that could happen?
Series: Just a Bunch of Technicolour Horses, but They're Angsty and Have Guns Now [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988980





	Vigilante

**Author's Note:**

> I had the idea to make a Fallout: Equestria side story called 'Vigilante', once upon a time. While the premise was good, and I had some key ideas down, I just couldn't find a good way to connect them. This was one of my many attempts to write something longer than a few thousand words, but I'm just a very short story, vignette kind of person. Oh yeah, I tried to write it in first-person too, which was a pain. I'll just stick with third-person since FP is for self-inserts and nerds.

Sometimes, the only thing you could hear in the LogSec was the tapping of keyboards, the whirring of servers; the usual tech ambience. The room was dim, with only the light of the screens illuminating the darkness. Desks lined the room, split down the middle with a wall of screens at the very front, constantly changing as they searched for anything worth finding. Below the screens, I sat at my desk, transmission after transmission beaming through my headset as I typed. Sometimes, it was quiet. The rest of the time… not so much: the desks were filled, the quiet gone, and it only returned when the target was dead. Lots of fun – especially when you’re stuck at the very front with three bleedin’ monitors in your face.

“Bishop, this is Loyalty, target’s currently en route to JR-7. How copy, over?”

“Lima Charlie, Loy’, closing in now. Watch the west perimeter, over.”

“Wilco, Bish. Will update if needed. Loyalty out.”

I sat back in my chair, visibly sagging as I stared at the monitor. About half an hour before, we had centred in on the location of one Lucky Stars. Lucky was a known chem peddler and producer of Moon Dust, a drug found far east around Hoofington. Pretty rare to see outside The Hoof, so naturally I was assigned to watch over a raid via drone. Well, I say ‘drone’, but what I mean is one of those annoying little radio sprites that float around. Her plant was taken over by the team sent after her, but Lucky flew off before anypony could retain her. Naturally, one of the Tactical Specialists, Checkmate, was sent after her to ‘clean up’.

Lucky was making her way over to Junction R-7 in hopes to shake him off, and it did seem to work for a while for Checkmate landed, watching her go off. She kept flying, soaring over the rusted rails and box cars until…

Bang.

“Target down, over,” Checkmate said. Despite hearing the distant screams of the wounded Lucky, I activated my mike.

“Copycat, Bishop. Who’s shot, over?”

“Own shot—” A second gunshot racked through my headset, causing me to wince. I needed to fix the audio mixing on the speakers, or maybe it was just the sound of another pony dying that made me wince.

“Second shot, over?” I asked.

“Not mine, Loyalty. Repeat, not mine.”

“Probably JR-7’s occupants, Bishop. Get back to the squad so you lot can return to HQ. Debrief with me in ten minutes. Loyalty out.”

“Wilco. Bishop out.”

I cleared my throat hoarsely, looking over to my nearly empty bottle of water. Would’ve been nice to have a water spell, but the Arcane Sector hadn’t come up with anything, not even the Head, Star Shine. Smart lass.

I must’ve passed at least ten minutes hopelessly trying at spells to refill the bottle, but to no avail. I say ‘at least’ since Checkmate was standing a few feet behind me, watching me with some sort of amused concern, like if a colt was threatening you. Check was always a pretty good friend of mine, considering the missions that we’d went through. His coat was a walnut beige, while his mane is more of a maple, much like the colours of a wooden chessboard. His eyes were just sheer black, which surprised me when I first saw him, since I expected him to have one black iris, and one white; y’know, for black and white chess pieces. I guess the white sclera counts, given his black irises and all.

“How long you been standing there?” I asked, turning in my chair to face him.

“About two, three minutes,” he replied with his typical Fillydelphian tone, glancing down to the dust smattering the floor. “Y’know, I thought you’d be a little more adept with magic.”

“I am. I’m just not great with transfiguration. My knowledge focuses on arcane science.” I replied, frowning surlily as I took off my headset, letting it rest around my neck.

“What, like CELESTIA?” He asked, looking up to the large array of screens hanging over my desk. CELESTIA is what made my life in DeadShot foal’s play, but it made my life outside a living hell. It was supposed to stand for something. Don’t ask me what, though; I just made it up on the spot since I’ve always liked Celestia’s name. It’s got a nice ring to it. To cut a long story short, I and a couple’ others engineered this AI that constantly scanned and stored information about the wasteland, divided into coordinated sectors. If it found an anomaly, it would cross-reference the visual change with the images it had in its system (images of raiders, power armour, hellhounds, so on) and if it matched or wasn’t sure, it notified me. Took a few months to make the prototype, and I spent the rest of my time at DeadShot improving its algorithms, adding references; heck, I even added a couple of 3D models, so it could identify some individual ponies if the camera angle was right. It took months to collect the right circuitry, but it made LogSec’s job a hell of a lot easier.

“CELESTIA is my crownin’ achievement, Check! O’ course I mean CELESTIA!” I protested. My Irish accent had a nasty habit of being more prominent whenever I raise my voice. After a short pause, I sighed, visibly deflated. “Anyway, fill me in on what happened. Stars was killed, I’m guessing?”

“I checked just before I returned to the squad. Dead as… well, a really dead thing. Similes aren’t my thing,” Checkmate replied, clearing his throat sheepishly.

“Right. What’d you lot find in the, uh… the plant?”

“A hell of a lot of Moon Sugar, and a few refiners. Nothing to say where the unrefined sugar comes from, though.”

I nodded, looking back to the constantly switching screens for a moment.

“Alright, guess we’ll have to try and find out where she got the sugar from. Any sources?” I asked my pupils shrinking against the light as I turned back to my monitors.

“None except a possible confidant, last name Winds. Probably lives in South Hoofington due to some of the papers we found, but that’s all we know.”

“Got it. Dismissed, Check. Go get some food or something.” I gave a nod, taking my headset in an emerald aura and putting them back on.

Checkmate gave a brief salute. “Will do. We’ll send the papers to the archives?”

“Yep.”

“Understood. Don’t stay up too late,” Check joked, trotting off towards the exit.

“And tell someone to get me more water!” I called, glancing back as the doors opened, a feeble spill of light coming through only to be cut off once the door was closed again.

After a short spell, I looked around the room. Nine ponies in all, with seven Specialists. Given how I didn’t have anything else to do, there was nothing stopping me from getting an early night, despite Check’s jibes. It was nearly midnight, after all. I rose from my seat, pushing it up against the desk and resting my headset on a small pole resting beside the central monitor. Better than leaving it on the desk.

“Hey, Cipher. I’ll be in my quarters if I’m needed,” I said, the steel-grey pony giving a lazy but understanding wave. Cipher was one of the Specialists for Logistics. Every Sector had eight, and those eight were deemed as the most skilled in the sector, aside from the Head. DeadShot’s ranking system was a little weird, but Specialist was undoubtably one of the comfier positions to be in.

Opening the door just enough to get through, I stepped out, shielding my eyes from the stark fluorescent lights above. Given how the DeadShot HQ is basically a very shelled out Stable, not a sliver of natural light gets in. They just got a Stable, cleaned it up, and built out from the underground walls, so now there’s just a pretty sizeable tunnel complex underneath an old Stable. Stable… eighty-something, I think? I’m pretty sure it was. I hadn’t been outside for so long, I didn’t even remember what the sunlight felt like. The tunnels were big enough, going by about six feet wide, five feet high. Concrete is one of the things that won’t ever really be in short supply, even nowadays, so I’m still not surprised that DeadShot could’ve built such a complex. Would’ve helped to have some signs, though. Having had to take a moment to remind myself on where to go, I went down the corridor and took a right, passing a mare I didn’t recognise. I kept walking, passing EngSec as I turned another corner, passing Arc’ and making my way down towards the barracks. The barracks were Spartan, like most of the HQ: a simple corridor of rooms, labelled 1A, 2A, 3A, so on at the left, and the same thing on the right, just with B. The Specialists had the rooms from one to four, and the normal soldiers had the rest. The Heads, however, had their own rooms right before the barracks.

After maybe a minute of navigating my way to the barracks, I stared at the dulled plaque on the door: Loyalty. Sweet Luna’s mercy, that’s going to scream irony sooner or later. ‘Loyalty the Traitor’. Yeah, just rolls off the tongue.

I opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind me with a heavy sigh. My room was just like the other Heads’: simple bed, simple wardrobe, simple desk with a simple terminal. The only reason we really had the wardrobe was for different uniforms. The Heads of Arc’ and Med’, Nebula and Honesty, probably kept their lab-coats in there. Honesty probably kept his blindfold in there, too. Me, I just had my ceremonial uniform that I only ever wore for promotions and all that shit. Opening my wardrobe, a faltering smile rose to my face. My old black hoodie was still there, the one that I always used to wear until the dress codes were enforced; one of Nebula’s Specialists was nice enough to chunk a few protective enchantments on. My smile soon faded to an annoyed frown. I didn’t get why they had a dress code in the HQ – and I still don’t; wasn’t like they had anypony to impress. The frown lessening to more of a belligerent look, I glanced to the mirror that was fixed to the inside of the wardrobe doors, smudged from shoddy cleaning. I looked sickly, as I did most of the time, staring at a screen in the dark all day could really take an effect on you. My coat was still the gun-steel grey that it’s always been, and my mane was still as vibrantly lime as ever, even with a few slightly darker streaks here and there. My eyes, despite the slightly refracted pupils causing the delicate issue of me having no fuckin’ long-range vision, were still the green my ma always used to compliment. She always said I was such a handsome colt – must’ve grown out of it. Sure, I was (and am) only in my twenties, but my life was a wreck already. Hey, at least I had my magic fuckin’ hoodie.

I stared at my reflection for a few minutes. I don’t know what I was thinking about, but whatever it was, it calmed me down enough for me to lie in bed without tossing and turning for a good couple of minutes. Maybe I was thinking of how I could meet my parents again if I left, or maybe the fact that I’d never have to see Honesty’s permanently annoyed face again, but whatever it was, it helped me. I grew resigned to the fact that I’d be leaving my friends, leaving everything I ever knew. Sure, I’d probably die after no more than a week out there, but a week as a free pony is what I wanted, instead of a lifetime as a slave.

And with that on my mind, for the first time in days, sleep came easily.


End file.
